is charles koch looking into silvio berlusconi esque power grab now he could be right why would this billionaire come out of the shadows come from investing in ten minutes to actually being one of the candidates and getting all that bad attention that comes with being a political candidate in america well he did run for vice president he ran on the libertarian ticket back in one nine hundred eighty and looking at the ron paul army we know that's a pretty passionate voter base today but who really knows what charles koch is up to what we do know is that buying up newspapers or influencing the media can be very beneficial to specific industries especially industries committed to drilling refining and transporting fossil fuels industries that are committed to denying that the planet is warming industries like coke industries a study published last year by the journal environmental research letters looked into newspapers across the world to find out just how prevalent stories denying climate change are what they found was staggering in the united states thirty

percent thirty four percent of all the articles reviewed were devoted to climate change denial committed to questioning the science behind climate change we ranked number one in the world in skeptical climate change stories in our newspapers with more than double the rate seen in the second highest country the u.k. and now as the times reports the coax you've spent a lot of money and think tanks political organizations and political candidates all devoted to denying that the planet is warming are now looking to purchase a bunch of newspapers around the nation including newspapers in florida part of the tribune newspaper holdings include the two largest papers in florida the orlando sentinel and the sun sentinel in fort lauderdale on saturday the state of florida announced that it is suing b.p. and halliburton over the two thousand and ten deepwater horizon oil spill which happened three years ago saturday. so will the merits of this lawsuit or debate

over future laws regulating oil explore exploration refinement transportation will these debates take place in these big florida newspapers perhaps and if they are then then being owned by koch industries seems like a win for the oil barons three years ago the nation suffered its worst environmental disaster ever with the b.p. oil spill in the gulf today tar sands oil flows in wetlands across mayflower arkansas all a result of another oil pipeline accident and now with policy debates raging about more pipelines and cutting carbon emissions the biggest players in america's dirty fossil fuel industry the koch's want to control at least some of the media coverage of these oil disasters by purchasing influential newspapers now having said all of that today is earth day so happy earth day joining me now to talk more about earth and what earth day means in two thousand and thirteen with so many challenges to the plate and on the horizon our here in studio tyson slocum director of public citizens energy program and author of the recent public citizen report america can

afford the keystone pipeline them lashoff climate scientists with the natural natural resources defense council in new york and brad johnson campaign manager with the forecast the facts he's in san francisco thank you all for joining me brad i want to start with you i don't you know want to blame one party to me neither party is doing as much as they including the president is doing as much as they need to on climate change but how trouble is it to you brad that wealthy conservative climate change deniers like the koch's are moving into newspapers medium that's already being used to funnel doubt regarding climate change and what will they do with these do you think. well as you pointed out we in many ways arnie's have seen what that looks like really the news corp empire throughput murdoch when fox news with the new york post and one of the recent hurdy probably most of that u.k. climate change to now and in the news was from papers there so if you had it he's

so far as we can tell he's primarily doing that for political and economic power but if you took id you political ideologues like the cokes who also have a direct and personal interest in promoting fossil fuel use and preventing the regulation of their pollution then you would see kind of this it would be like rupert murdoch could be fox news on on steroids and it would be in los angeles it would be in chicago it would be in florida it would be across this country and it's a really troubling it's a really troubling scenario yeah and you know we talked about florida was affected by the b.p. oil spill and these florida and chicago illinois i mean these are battleground states so that will be very influential to determine climate change legislative legislation dealing with climate change in the future tyson is another bit of irony on this earth day it's also the last day to submit public comments regarding the

keystone pipeline. over million signatures have been submitted to the white house to stop this this pipeline or at least the full construction the pipelines are to improve part of it. what should the white house speak incinerating at this point as they're making their final decisions regarding this pipeline well we saw one of those one million comments submitted was the environmental protection agency's comments today which raise the number of critical issues about the greenhouse gas emission analysis conducted by the contractor that did the environmental impact statement on behalf of the state to par. and so i think what the administration should do is go back to the drawing board particularly since some questions have been raised by my organization and others about whether or not this contractor that did the environmental impact statement has ties to trans canada which is the company that is trying to build this pipeline so i think that the administration

needs to recognize that the environmental impact statement. underestimated the greenhouse gas emission impacts of what the pipeline will do in toward in terms of increasing tar sands oil production up in canada to bring it down to the united states one of the comments was from the e.p.a. hey that is basically the mystery of who should listen to their own e.p.a. with their i think when it comes to an environmental analysis obama should be listening to the p.a. and not to the department of state dan i want to go to the new you in new york it's been three years since the b.p. oil spill. happened right around earth as well we now have another spill being dealt with in arkansas all and we have as tyson mentioned the keystone construction underway what has been done since the first b.p. oil spill to make sure this sort of stuff doesn't happen again is that enough as we're building another pipeline of course i guess the b.p. oil spill was a it was a oil well underground it was in a pipeline but still the same sort of stuff are we doing enough to prevent these

sort of disasters from happening again. well in short no very little has happened since the b.p. oil spill there's been no major reform legislation to really tighten up the standards there been some reforms to the mineral management service the department of interior and the way they. run these programs but as we've seen in these recent pipeline spills the level of oversight for fossil fuel production and transportation is nowhere near what it what it needs to be and of course the big picture is that we just need to be moving away from fossil fuels altogether and maximizing our investment in clean energy technology to get a handle on climate change yeah absolutely and tyson we see. especially with the keystone pipeline the debate around it is always focused on economics how many jobs are going to be pretty even though those numbers are pretty faulty what will it do the price of gasoline again those numbers are also faulty still but the debate is

always centered around economics how do we change it to a moral debate that this isn't about economics it doesn't matter what this will do the price of gas or how many jobs will be heard in the short term we're facing a moral crisis and that's what we should be talking about why i think there's been a whole bunch of grassroots activism by public citizen and a bunch of other environmental groups that's part of why there's a million people have submitted comments on this environmental impact statement being coordinated by the department of state so what you see is millions of americans going up against this cynical todd funded by the koch brothers and funded by exxon and all the other big oil and fossil fuel companies because poll after poll shows that a majority of americans understand that climate change is real they understand that climate change is the result of us burning fossil fuels at a record rate and we have to act in order to save the planet and leave it better for future generations and so what i see is actually inspiring that people are

going up against this way. wave of fossil fuel funded cynicism and actually demanding that the administration and congress take action so the question is is this tide of popularity of grassroots activism going to be able to overcome the entrenched fossil fuel interests in washington d.c. and i think that's the fight that we're going to see played out this year yeah it definitely is the fight and brad. what's your take on this fight i mean what are the specific probe proposals that the that you know climate activists need to be pushing for to go after the fossil fuel industry and try to rein that in and slow the planet from morning a little well i think there's two important things one is that the ongoing fight against keystone excel really makes sense because it really is a clear way for us to understand whether president obama is going to be of up to his promises on climate change and on his moral promises to his own children but

also the fight that we're talking about right now with the koch brothers one very important thing is that if people don't get to hear the stories of all the other people who are fighting with them against the entrenched power of fossil fuels then they don't believe that there's a chance for change and when you have corporate controlled media when you have fossil fuel corporate controlled media then that story doesn't get out which is why if you go to forecast the facts or we have a petition right now about opposing the coach takeover of three being company. yeah and the assuming then that if we lose this fight and if the fossil fuel industry is just given the keys to do whatever they want and suck the last trillions of dollars of oil out of the ground i'm out of the consequences what does the future look like not just in terms of a warming planet but in terms of as the as the oil gets harder and harder to reach doesn't make industrial accidents more and more likely i mean we just have thirty seconds left well we're moving to

a next era of extreme energy and that's making global warming worse it's making accidents worse but since it's earth day how about a little good news the president actually has a big opportunity to reduce the biggest source of carbon pollution in the united states which is power plants and the great thing about it is he doesn't have to wait for congress this is something the e.p.a. has the power to do any obligation to do and that's an alarm for the planet. today there must be there must be the koch brothers setting off the fire alarm in new york. let's get it together you know let's try and take it on let's go to brad johnson tyson slocum to lash out thank you all for joining thank you. coming up after the break there's not much difference between transportation the popular princeton's cartoon in transportation america today i will explain why and how we can change that in tonight's daily to a. potentially

deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more power. and there's still a lot of snow out here and a good place for snowball fight. to. it is kind of a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's it been like nobody's largely driving lessons from emergency vehicles are exceptions.

international at the very heart of moscow.

so the newscaster a.j. clemente had a rough day on the job a rough first day on the job in fact sunday at n.b.c. affiliate why are t.v. in bismarck north dakota luckily for us it was all captured on video take a look in b.c. north dakota news your news leader in high definition. good evening i'm dan q you may have seen our newest a.j. and the north dakota news and hell be joining the weekend news same as my co-anchor tell us a little bit about yourself a.j. . thanks man i'm very excited i graduated from west virginia interests me and i'm used to you know from being from the east coast. welcome aboard. not surprisingly a.j. was fired but rumor has it he's been offered a position to join the channel four news team in san diego. fire travel for news team veronica corning stone and diver on burgundy. are still said to go.

yesterday this man tim de christopher walked out of a prison after serving nearly two years for interfering in a give away oil auction hosted by the bush administration in two thousand and eight basically right before bush left office he put up one hundred thirty thousand acres of land in utah up for sale for the oil and gas industry it was an illegal auction that would have handed huge parcels of public land over to oil corporations for a sweet deal and to christopher knowing that the auction was flawed and an activist against fossil fuels decided to commit civil disobedience against it he secretly

paid one point seven million dollars for some of the land and he won that bid once it's he had no intention of ever buying the land what he did was illegal and he was thrown in jail before that though he made a rousing appeal for collective action in organization against fossil fuels saying in two thousand and eleven quote i think by putting more power into the hands of human beings whether that's through community groups whether that's through local politics whatever that may be i think shifting that power structure will put more power in the hands of people that is going to make the transition away from dependence on fossil fuels more humane when people are less dependent on our industrial economy they're more liberated to stand up to the injustices of that industrial economy and create their own power. ironically de christopher was released right around earth day and founded in one nine hundred sixty nine earth day is an annual holiday to highlight the various efforts worldwide that are taken each and every day to protect our environment including efforts like timbs which

sent him to prison today earth day is celebrated in over one hundred ninety nations worldwide and the number grows larger each year unfortunately as the years have gone by the true meaning of earth day has become blurred by corporate power and by our society's toxic addiction to the fossil fuels that are polluting our environment and hastening the process of climate change while we have made some strides in fighting back against the greatest threat to our planet has ever faced we still rely far too much on sources of energy that are not only dirty but that are rooted millions of years ago in our planet's history there is any hope of preventing a complete environmental catastrophe we need to stop relying on dirty fossil fuels now and step out of the age of the dinosaurs and that doesn't mean just putting pressure on our government officials but also taking upon ourselves to fight on behalf of our shared planet and that is the subject of tonight's daily take. are

you ready for the end of civilization as we know it or at least the evacuation of all the old confederate states researchers at the national oceanic atmospheric administration report that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere underwent one of its largest single year jumps ever in two thousand and twelve two in the end of two thousand and eleven and the beginning of this year carbon dioxide levels increased by two point six seven parts per million and increase only topped by the c o two spike of one thousand nine hundred eight this rastignac rise in c o two levels makes it highly unlikely that global warming can be limited to just the two degrees celsius threshold that most scientists and researchers agree is the bare minimum needed to avoid complete climate catastrophe. we've known for quite some time that if we don't meet this two degree threshold large chunks the land across the globe will likely become uninhabitable for humans and that includes the united

states as one of the nation's top climate scientists as is dr james hansen put it climate change human made global warming is happening it is already having noticeable impacts if we stay on with business as usual the southern us will become almost on inhabitable. so where is all this c o two coming from it's pushing us to the edge of climate catastrophe it's coming from our addiction to burning fossil fuels like oil natural gas and coal for energy but we're out of that carbon come from that we're pouring into the air i lay it all out my book the last hours of ancient sunlight fossil fuels like oil natural gas and coal are captured form of ancient sunlight that has been stored in the earth for millions of years around four hundred million years ago there was an error on our planet known as the carboniferous period at the beginning of this period in earth's history there were

huge amounts of carbon in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas that holds the heat of the sun against the earth and doesn't let it escape during the carboniferous period there was so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the temperature of our planet was much higher than it is today too hot for any large animals like us instead the world was populated by little things and lots and lots of plants the high levels of carbon dioxide in the air during the carboniferous period trap sunlight energy is heat and provided massive amounts of carbon in the carbon dioxide for the plants to pull out of the atmosphere and uses raw material to make carbohydrates through the sunlight process driven process of photosynthesis building carbohydrate based leaves stems and root. it's out of all of that carbon dioxide as a result pangea the huge continent that once covered a quarter of our planet so a tremendous growth in plant life was covered in

a dense matter of vegetation mostly ferns and this was before trees it even evolved and in many cases rose hundreds of feet into the air this vegetation created groundcover of rotting and dead plant matter that ultimately became hundreds to thousands of feet deep as the vegetation continue to grow a trapped more and more carbon from the atmosphere at the same time the earth's oceans which cover three quarters of the planet's surface are also experiencing an explosion of plant growth mostly in the form of algae and other microscopic plants like the land plants the algae and the other microscopic ocean plants capture the energy of the sun's your photosynthesis and converted atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbohydrate plant matter and then died and settled to the bottom of the ocean floor but three hundred million years later a massive disaster occurred possibly from a collision with an asteroid it caused an explosion in tectonic activity that tore

apart of a continent of and jia and forever changed the planetary environment here it's crust broken many places because of volcanoes to erupt and pieces of land to crumble and migrate and these huge chunks of land collided with each other millions of acres of earth were covered by mountains or by other land that what once think thick mat of vegetation sunk deep within the ground. fifty million years later dinosaurs began to roam the earth and another period of stability began on earth and on its two continents which geologists today called near asia and go go gondwanaland. the triassic jurassic cretaceous periods known together as the mezzo of period came to an end sixty five million years ago when a meteor asteroid struck the earth causing the dinosaurs to go extinct during the mesozoic period the planet underwent another period geological on

a rest and the two continents broke in a smaller pieces of land to create the seven continents that exist today at the same time mountains were created as these cons drifted into each other and plant matter that had been buried underground millions of years before it was pushed even further into the ground and subject to great pressure that pressure and millions of years of time converted all that now underground plant matter into oil coal and natural gas. which brings us to nine thousand nine hundred years ago when humans for in europe and asia first discovered coal beneath the surface of the earth and began to burn the coal and burn it was the surface of the most ancient mats of vegetation that had been buried deep under the earth's surface millions of years ago. there weren't that many of us that however the world's population was less than a half billion and we didn't use much coal but when colonel drake drilled the world's

first commercial oil well in titusville pennsylvania nine hundred sixty five he began a whole new way of living i'll call is mostly from the land plants oil is from the dead plants the sank to the bottom of the ocean floor hundreds of millions of years ago that marine plant matter was trapped underground and compressed into what we call oil. but enough of the scientific talk think of it like this every time you go to put gasoline in your car your power in your car with little fossil is made from plants the died so long ago that humans were not even yet on the planet and every time a power plant burns coal it's similarly burning fossils of now extinct plants that outdate the human race by hundreds of millions of years since the beginning of the nineteenth century we've based our entire economy our livelihoods are in file civilization on bottles just think about that for a second these preserved remains of animals and mostly plants that lived and died

hundreds of millions of years ago today run our country from the cars we drive to the electricity we use in our homes they fuel our ships and our planes they drive our industry and our computers and most importantly are made into fertilizers and pesticides and they power the machines that plant harvest and transport our food we're literally living on and even eating the product of fossils and that's crazy we must move away from the subservient it's crazy to rely a dead organic material in ancient sunlight fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago to run our economy and our society. one way we can break our addiction to fossil fuels is to create a carbon tax so clean energy forms that use modern sunlight energy from wind to solar to waves or replace our addiction to dirty fossil fuels all across the globe from australia to china to europe nations have made the decision to break their

addiction to fossil fossil fuels using carbon tax it's time america did the same thing it's time we stepped out of the carboniferous mesozoic periods and into the twenty first century. and that's the way it is tonight monday april twenty second two thousand and thirteen more information check out our website said tom hartman dot com free speech or r t dot com in hulu dot com slash the big picture and oprah did as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag you're it. wealthy british style. sometimes.

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from about international airport in the very heart of moscow.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle rising china in a pivoting america according to a recent white paper china's military establishment is carefully watching and becoming very concerned over washington strategic planning in the pacific ocean the americans say their pivot is a natural reallocation of resources the chinese see it as a regional policy of containment. to cross the chinese defense concerns i'm joined by neil gupta in washington he is a professor of strategy and globalization at the university of maryland and c. ard also in washington we have matthew skew venza he is an associate editor of the china channel at the atlantic and in boston we cross to john walsh he is a contributor to counterpunch and antiwar dot com as well as a founding member of come home america right gentlemen crosstalk rules and if that means you can jump in anytime you want john if i go.